Don't Even Go There—Travel Writing for the Rest of Us

Even if the world is your oyster, you can still chip a tooth on its shell. While travel magazines feature exotic locales of breathtaking beauty, we expose sites so depressing that no traveler this side of Edgar Allan Poe would venture there without a tub-load of tranquilizers. Take Las Vegas (please) and the $5.99 all-you-can-eat buffet line at Sam’s Town. That's the world we explore at Don’t Even Go There.

On this site, we tell of places we’ve visited but wish we hadn’t. We reveal vacation plans gone awry and relate horror stories from the road best abandoned. These true stories reflect where we’ve chosen to go. We only have ourselves to blame. We rarely needed to exaggerate—the truth really is stranger than a Dan Brown novel.

Don’t Even Go There: travel tips for those of us who aren’t escorted by security guards, pampered by wealthy benefactors, or provided a generous per diem. This blog is for seasoned travelers and armchair tourists who want the real world first-hand and head-on, with all its drama, horror, and humor. You’ll laugh at us, cry with us, and decide to stay home more often.

22 March 2008

Of all the places to see in Australia—and there are many to choose from—the one to avoid is the Outback. It’s a vast desert, uninterrupted by signs of life like swimming pools or cocktail bars. Only dingos, kangaroos, and Aboriginal natives roam the Outback, and they won’t likely mix you a martini.

The Australian coast, on the other hand, is dotted with big cities and bigger resorts. That’s where the action is. When you can choose Melbourne with its harbor, or Sydney with its opera house, or Perth with its yacht races, there’s no reason to venture into the Outback (or as we like to call it, the middle 80 percent of the country).

Yet the Outback is home to the busiest tourist destination in Australia: Ayers Rock Resort. It sits smack in the middle of the country, about 275 miles from the nearest town: Alice Springs, which is about half a dusty day away by car, although you can fly now, cutting the trip to just a couple miserable hours.

We went there because it was far away from home, but we found that some people go there because they like desolation. These are the same people who visit the Egyptian pyramids in August and the German concentration camps in January. These are the same people who weigh 80 pounds and could outrun you in a footrace. These are the same people who pride themselves on their ability to survive for a week with just a teaspoon of water. These are the same people who desperately need psychiatric treatment.

Of course, the real reason to visit the Outback is to see Uluru/Ayers Rock. The rock—Australians use both names—is a natural formation, the second-largest monolith in the world (after Mount Augustus, also in Australia). It’s more than 986 feet high and about five miles around. It’s said to extend 3 1/2 miles into the earth.

As rocks go, this one is unique. Depending on the time of day and atmospheric conditions, Uluru/Ayers Rock can actually appear to change color, from blue to violet to glowing red. Photography is popular, but scaling the rock is what draws most people, even though the climb is both a strenuous and dangerous undertaking. Many climbers never make it to the top. Several die every year, mainly from heart failure.

We decided to stay in the bar. Instead of climbing, we contented ourselves with Fosters and photography.

If you go to Uluru/Ayers Rock, there’s only one place to stay: a resort about eleven miles away called Yulara. (The name Yulara comes from the Aboriginal word for howling dingos.) A town of about 1,800—most of whom are foreigners—Yulara was created by the Australian government to support tourism in the area. Originally, it allowed a number of competing hotels, but that arrangement proved unmanageable, so in its infinite wisdom, the government leased the land to one corporation: Voyages.

It’s not the only place to stay because it’s garnered the most recommendations. It’s the only place to stay because it’s the only place there is. All Yularan residents lease their housing from Voyages. All residents are kept under 24-hour surveillance. And if you violate company policy, you’re given 48 hours to leave town. Permanently. That kind of thing might make you mad, but on August 18, 1983, it made one Australian truck driver crazy. After being refused service, he rammed his 25-ton truck into a hotel, killing five patrons. So the story goes.

Apparently, the extreme conditions aren’t the only danger in the Outback.

Lessons Learned: Visit Uluru/Ayers Rock if you must, but be prepared—you’ll be living under someone else’s rules, seeing the same faces in the same bars while the same people watch over you. As for us, we’ll stick to the coast from now on, where native Aussies may be a bit odd, but they’re far from homicidal.

If You Won’t Listen to Us:Nearest Airport: Ayers Rock Resort AirportNative Population: 1,800Normal Attractions: Uluru/Ayers Rock, Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, resorts, and camping.Final Point of Interest: The local Aboriginals don’t climb the rock, but reluctantly tolerate others to. It’s said that anyone who takes rocks from the formation will be cursed and suffer misfortune.

Every month, we like to throw a quote at you to mix things up and give your eager eyes a short subject to devour. This month’s quote is from your new favorite travel advisors (us):

“When traveling to a foreign country that speaks a different language, many Americans will try to speak English slower or louder in the hope of being understood. We use an entirely different approach: body language. We’ve discovered that people in any country understand what you want if you really, really, really have to pee.”

An Inside Look

How We Saw It: Our Rating System

We rate each place in ten categories for Don’t Even Go There. These ratings appear at the end of each sorry tale:

• Blight-Seeing—how decrepit a place it is—rated 1 to 5, where a 5 means the place is so disgusting, you’ll almost wish you were in Detroit. Almost.

• Communication Breakdown—how difficult it is to communicate in English—rated 1 to 5, where a 5 means speaking English could actually endanger your life.

• Customer Dis-service—how bad the service is—rated 1 to 5, where a 5 could indicate that you’ll have to carry your own bags, uphill, through a crowd of beggars who, if you’re lucky, will only give you a slight case of leprosy.

• Discomfort Level—how much you have to “rough it”—rated 1 to 5, where a 5 means you better be in top physical shape just to survive the weekend.

• Grunge Factor—how dirty a place it is—rated 1 to 5, where a 5 indicates a need for anti-fungal cream, powerful bug spray, careful food choices, and boiling water before you drink it.

• Inactivity Guide—how many activities are available—rated 1 to 5, where a 5 means a working TV set is an attractive entertainment option.

• Rent-Attainment—how difficult it is to get accommodations—rated 1 to 5, where a 5 indicates a big wad of cash won’t get you the time of day, never mind a mattress and box springs.

• Spontaneous Consumption—how the shopping compares to home—rated 1 to 5, where a 5 means you’ll be tempted to buy stuff you’ll only regret later, especially when you pass through Customs on your way home.

• Fun Fraction—how much fun you can expect—rated 1/5 to 5/5, where a 5/5 can actually be fun, as long as you dress right and take the necessary precautions.

• Vibe-Rating—how the overall experience feels—rated 1 to 5, where a 5 means that, believe it or not, we’d go there again. Don’t expect to see many of these.

An Inside Look

About Us

Mark is living a dream: writing to entertain and inform (luckily, he has a day job). His writing style has evolved from years of jotting down notes in the back of a pickup while hitchhiking. A recovering tech writer, he’s contributed to several published books and edits others for a living. He’s also writing a screenplay.

Jason took a more circuitous path to travel writing. First came the travel, then came the writing. He’s seen his share of places to avoid, up close and way too personal. After completing screenplays and television scripts, he became a filmmaker and video editor. He uses his acute eye to record detail Mark overlooked in his haste to get the hell out of there.

They have teamed up to create the Don’t Even Go There travel series. They hope it will turn conventional travel writing on its ear. They hope it will upset people. They hope it will lead its authors to a book deal, a movie idea, and maybe even a lawsuit.

Meanwhile, you get to experience a new bittersweet comedy vicariously, from the comfort of your computer chair, every week. Keep coming back, and leave a comment so we know you were here!

An Inside Look

Disclaimer

Most of the text and photos in this blog are copyright 2007-2017 by Mark Henry Bloom & Jason Scholder. All rights reserved. Contact us for reuse permission or to find out what we borrowed from another source. We would like to thank all our friends and relatives at this time who, knowingly or not, donated to our blog, some of whom we actually credit. With friends like these, who needs lawyers? Thank you.